When Judgment Learned to Kneel

When Judgment Learned to Kneel is Lendys’s account of the events that ultimately bind his soul to Maire, his lover, through a pact that only he partly understands. The story begins when he realizes that, despite everything they have endured during their travels, he still has not told her the whole truth about his past or about the predicament that caused their fates to become intertwined.

Once the First Dragon and god of judgment, Lendys ruled beside Tamara, goddess of mercy and his former consort. Their bond begins to fracture when she attempts to restrain him in the name of mercy and patience, pleading for time to resolve a growing crisis “the right way.” Lendys ignores her appeals, confronts her, and uncovers what he sees as a betrayal, one that shatters his faith in both Tamara and the draconic order they built together.

At the same time, Maire’s mother, Liliana, emerges as one of his greatest enemies through the experiments conducted by her children on mortals, divine power, and false vessels. Her brood spreads chaos across Faerun while exploiting the power of two goddesses to conceal their work and strengthen their resolve. Their goal is to create perfect vessels capable of allowing gods to walk the mortal world without restraint or concern for the lives caught beneath them.

What follows is a century-long hunt across Faerun. Lendys pursues Liliana and her brood while losing the only friends he ever truly considered family, along with allies made throughout the conflict and, eventually, his own capacity for restraint. What begins as justice curdles into vengeance after he falls in battle and is stripped of the divine protections that once made him nearly untouchable, forcing him to use taboo magic to assimilate one of the very vessels created to house a god.

The conflict culminates in the deaths of most, if not all, of Liliana’s draconic brood and the destruction of the draconic pantheon. After Bahamut, Lendys’s son, resurrects him within the chambers of the Starlight Palace, Lendys tears through anyone who stands in his way. When the same power that once stripped him of his divinity finally resurfaces, it drives him into a rage and gives him the edge he needs to slaughter the draconic gods and Tamara, his former lover.

This part of the story ends with the final battle between Lendys and Tamara. Afterward, his primordial brothers, Null and Tast, break into the Starlight Palace to bring about his end, believing he has forsaken his divinity and murdered another god. As Lendys is scattered into nothingness, the last thing he remembers is Tamara’s look of disgust and the sight of their son, Bahamut.

Then, in the very next moment, he is drawn back together more than a millennium later, lying in the throne room of Bahamut’s Starlight Palace.